Does Mr Speaker take orders from his mouthy (and Labour supporting) missus?

Just after half past two yesterday afternoon, the Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, rose to his full magnificence — he is the height of your average National Hunt jockey — and made an ornate, legalistic statement.

The matter under discussion was the scandal in Oldham East and Saddleworth, where an electoral court has unseated an MP for the first time in a century.

We were dealing here with lofty, rare principles of democratic representation. Or at least we should have been. Unfortunately for Mr Bercow — unfortunately for us, too — it was hard to divorce his parliamentary declaration from ­earlier remarks made by his Labour-supporting wife, Sally.

Under orders? Mr Speaker during his statement to the house yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately it was hard to divorce his remarks from that which his wife Sally made 24 hours earlier

She had gone on BBC tele­vision 24 hours earlier to mouth off on the subject and to urge her husband to take a particular and controversial course of action, effectively giving the unseated Labour MP another chance. Which advice — well, well, well — Mr Bercow now duly proceeded to follow. It was, to put it mildly, a touch rum.

Not for the first time, nor maybe the last, the newish Speaker had been overshadowed by his popsy.

Part of me, the political sketchwriter part, is thrilled. Ecstatic. Loving it. The all-but-barking Mrs Bercow, bulgy-eyed, boxer’s jaw, as assertive as the stroppiest kebab-house cook, is great for my trade.

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She is a sort of souped-up yummy mummy, one of those honking Sloanes (Marlborough College, Wiltshire, fees £30,000 a year) who understand rather less than they claim. All hail ‘Sally the Alley’, by her own admission the one-time good-time girl and drunkard.

This former young Conservative is now, from the comfort of her grace-and-favour palace on the banks of the Thames, ­styling herself the voice of the workin’ classes. It is as though the Good Life’s Margot Leadbetter had turned into Che Guevara.

Mouthing off: Mrs Bercow seems to have an opinion on most subjects - but would anyone listen if she wasn't the Speaker's wife?

Satire could not have wished for a riper item. Every day Mrs Bercow seems to let rip another volley of half-baked, anti-Coalition gibberish on her Twitter account. The working masses she seeks to espouse may reflect that only the ­leisured classes have the time or money to ‘Tweet’. They may also note that she lives the life of Riley thanks to her husband’s vast public salary, complete with glittering pension the moment he steps down from the job.

Mrs Bercow insists she is a woman in her own right, yet ­everyone knows she is paid attention simply because she happens to be the Speaker’s missus.

The broadcasters have leapt on her, happily recognising that here is a loose-tongued oddball with about as much political sense as a donkey. No matter! Yippee, she has an opaque position in the socio-political firmament and can be plausibly passed off as a personality in her own right. The dynamics of feminism would not countenance otherwise.

Because Mrs Bercow is a ‘Labour activist’ — the words with which she was
disingenuously introduced as a guest on that BBC programme at the
weekend — she can be used to satisfy broadcasting balance requirements,
yet be relied on to say something goofy.

She receives more airtime than any member of the Shadow Cabinet. One wonders how pleased Labour MPs are to have their party represented on supposedly serious political programmes by such an ­unpredictable figure.

Satire could not have wished for a riper item. Every day Mrs Bercow
seems to let rip another volley of half-baked, anti-Coalition gibberish
on her Twitter account

The most she has ever done is stand for a council seat, yet she is treated like some great sage.

At this point, we must drag ourselves away from gleeful contemplation of this Westminster comedy turn to consider the less cheerful matter of Oldham East and Saddleworth.

The constituency finds itself without a Member of Parliament after Phil Woolas, until last week a Labour frontbencher, was found guilty of telling lies in his election campaign. The General Election result in that constituency has therefore been declared void and a new election has been ordered.

The saga involving Mr Woolas has been a horrid tale of racist innuendo and tarnishing of the democratic process. We look to the Speaker of the Commons at such times to maintain the highest standards.

When the judgment was passed last week, that should have been it. But Mr
Woolas has appealed, twice.

Marital melodrama: Did Mr Speaker stand up to his wife following her outburst on BBC news - or did he simply do as she wished?

It thus fell to the Speaker yesterday afternoon to decide if Oldham East and Saddleworth should be given the immediate chance to elect a new MP, or wait until Mr ­Woolas — who has been disowned by real Labour politicians — has had the chance to clear his name.

In the normal course of things this would be a decision for political anoraks only, but with the Bercows ‘the normal course of things’ rarely occurs.

Because of her outburst on BBC television, in which she stood up for Mr Woolas as though he were guilty of nothing more grave than a speeding offence, the wider public suddenly watched with interest.

Here is a loose-tongued oddball with about as much political sense as a
donkey

Here was marital melodrama. Would ‘Mr Squeaker’ be a big, brave mouse and stand up to his fiery doxy? Or would he do as she wished?

He did the latter. Now, it is possible that he reached the decision on his own, or at least in consultation with his excellent clerks. It is possible that Mrs Bercow, sitting beside him in their well-sprung bed in the splendours of Speaker’s House over the weekend, did not ­murmur a word of advice from underneath her steaming ­bonnet.

We can choose to believe that the rolling pin was never wielded. We can try to persuade ourselves that the words ‘no John!’ were never uttered.

If we chose to believe those things we might, indeed, be siding with the truth, because what happens in a marriage is seldom entirely clear to anyone, not even sometimes to the combatants themselves. But how can we be sure?

In politics, alas, the truth is buttressed by appearance. And in the case of the Oldham East and Saddleworth constituency and its right to immediate ­representation in our elected House of Parliament, the appearance yesterday concerning the Speaker and his ­decision was muddied.

Was this truly the judgment of Solomon? Or was it the ­judgment, let us say, of a Dr Proudie?

Null and void: Mrs Bercow seemed to think that Phil Woolas's lies were nothing more grave than a speeding offence

In the novels of the Victorian writer Anthony Trollope, Dr Thomas Proudie is the much hen-pecked Bishop of Barchester, a man who tiptoes through his cathedral cloisters in ­constant terror of awakening the gorgon — Mrs Proudie! Is this how Speaker Bercow walks through the purlieus of the ­Palace of Westminster?

Mr Bercow likes to say that Mrs Bercow is not his ‘chattel’ and that she must be allowed to have a mind of her own. That may no longer be the question. She indeed does seem to have a mind of her own, a blunt one at that.

Those frequent, ill-judged, yackety-yack media appearances (with another to follow this week on Have I Got News For You) confirm that. The woman has all the political sophistication of a late-night radio phone-in spouter.

What worries us now, surely, is not her own independence of mind. It is whether or not Mr B is the ‘chattel’ of his wife. Does the Speaker have an opinion of his own? Or is Mr Squeaker uxorious, a mere proxy for his indomitable memsahib?

Though you may not expect me to say so, satire must sometimes be invited to play second fiddle to the higher ideal of strong civics.

The Speaker is supposedly the first Commoner in the kingdom, and we should wish that to remain the case.

To be Speaker, in past centuries, was to occupy the peak of Everest in parliamentary terms. The Speaker, wigged and stockinged, may have looked an old-fashioned figure, but that was part of the idea.

He (and until Betty Boothroyd it was always a he) was not as other men. He was not even really expected to be of this age. He was a semi-judicial ­figure, one who sacrificed ­personal pleasure for a higher purpose served by dignity and distance.The House of Commons is in desperate need of mature, ­dignified leadership. It may not receive anything approaching that until the gaudy, foolish Mrs Bercow has been told to put a cork in it.

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Does Speaker John Bercow take orders from his Labour supporting missus?